Crystal Palace Park

The third of the original StoryPlaces Leverhulme projects

Fallen Branches
by Katie Lyons

Sandy Fenton steps off the train from Somerset with an old bone in her backpack, and a wooden box with an oriental design on the lid containing three sheets of folded paper. Three sheets that hold the key to the missing Fenton family history. A lost letter, written in the shadow of the first world war, and a story of a love kindled here, beneath glittering panes and shimmering fountains.

So walk with Sandy as she discovers the faded wonders of the park, and the fallen branches that link lives across the years.

The Lost Letter
by Katie Lyons

Once you have read Fallen Branches, you may like to reread the letters of Harry and Blanche, the young lovers brought together by Crystal Palace Park and separated by class and circumstance. Blanche writes to Harry about her memories of their times together, the shows, fireworks, and stolen moments, and the decision she had to make in the ringing silence of Gallipoli.

Fire Fire!
by Mina Potter (aged 9) and Abigail Araya (age 10)

A tale set in 1936 in the shadow of the grand Crystal Palace tells the tragic story of a young local girl. Walk through this adventure with Mr Buckland and his daughter and discover the secrets and mysteries of this beautiful building. Who knows how it will end!

Parklife
By Martha Oster

All classes and types of people in Victorian England came to visit the Crystal Palace when it stood in this park. It was known as the "People's Palace", and was a place that celebrated diversity. Our area is still rich with diversity, and in no place is this more obvious than the park, with the many different people who still use it.

Wander round the park and see how many different characters you can meet. Listen in to their conversations for a taste of their lives. These voices will join the many centuries of ghost voices heard in the park... a little slice of history.

The Beast Within You
by Samantha Schafer

Have you ever thought about who else has walked these paths, how they might see the world, and how they might view the others walking beside them? Have you thought about how different from you that person might be, how dark and deep you might think their view? And have you ever thought that they might be right?

Walk with me, and let me show you.

Meet me at Crystal Palace
by Rosamund Davies

Two tales from the past, two young people, two adventures.

Step into the ill-fitting hand-me-down boots of 12 year old pickpocket, Ellie May, and climb up the hill to the palace where an unexpected encounter awaits. Or join the crowds at the top of the hill, who are watching the first ever Crystal Palace fireworks display, and help Herbert find his little sister Cissie, who's gone missing in the crowd.

The Crystal Palace has been deemed notoriously difficult to narrativize by nineteenth-century commentators and twenty-first-century critics alike. Victorian writers frequently likened the spectacular glass structure and its expansive grounds to Fairy Land or a palace from the Arabian Nights. In its second, larger incarnation on Sydenham Ridge, it could be seen from many locations across the city, standing as a landmark to Victorian grandeur and innovation. Symbolically, the Palace spoke of panoramic horizons across the British Empire and wider globe, and famously hosted the 1911 Festival of the Empire.

Overview

After the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire in 1936 the park fell into a period of dereliction and decay. Today, archaeological traces of the Victorian pleasure park (including the pioneering Geological illustrations and dinosaurs) combine with twentieth-century features counting an outdoor concert stage, children’s farm and playground and national sports centre to create a multi-faceted outdoors recreation space at the heart of the Upper Norwood community.

In this story project we will work with community groups such as the Friends of Crystal Palace Park, Upper Norwood Joint Library reading group and junior library and the Phoenix Community Centre Writing Group to produce stories about the Crystal Palace Park today, inflected by narratives from its Victorian heyday. These will culminate in events including reading evenings, exhibitions (for example, at the Upper Norwood Joint Library), and a virtual exhibition of stories.

The Stories

In this, our third story project, we worked with the Upper Norwood Library Hub to bring together local writers to create locative stories set in Crystal Palace Park that were inspired by it's history both before and after the great fire that destroyed the palace. We also commissioned Katie Lyons to create a more substantial experience. Katie is an actor and writer who has written for numerous theatre projects set in immersive environments such as experiences for CityRead London, including 2017's 'Prophecy' show at London's Charterhouse.

Katie's story, Fallen Branches, is a romantic mystery in which readers explore the park's historical layers, following a young women as she uncovers family secrets, and a love lost in the shadows of the first world war.

We gave all the writer's for Crystal Palace access to our toolkit, and ran a workshop with them where we introduced them to our authoring tool. Unlike our previous projects it was the writers who created their digital stories directly in the tool, and we also worked closely with Katie to try and create an interactive story that worked with the landscape both thematically and navigationally. In total five of the writers at the workshop created complete stories, which we launched alongside Katie’s Fallen Branches at the Overgound Festival in the Summer of 2017.

Read the Crystal Palace Stories

Overground Festival

(17th June, 2017)

During the Overground Festival, we had a project stall next to the official story tent to launch our locative stories. It was a very hot and busy day, with over 28,000 visitors to the festival. The story tent was a fabulous draw, and it was great to see our own writers give some readings of their stories there in the afternoon.

You can find out more about the event here in this ECS news article.

Dave also wrote up a personal account of the day which you can find on his blog